In the present study we investigated the effects of alcohol in breast and colon cancer cell lines because both of these cancers are promoted by alcohol use. Our data show that alcohol stimulates expression of the signature mesenchymal protein vimentin in breast and colon cancer cells. We also show that Snail knockdown inhibits this alcohol-induced vimentin expression in Caco-2 cells. Epithelial cells express cytokeratin intermediate filaments, while these filaments are composed of vimentin in mesenchymal cells. (De Wever et al., 2008). Vimentin is the most widely used and well validated signature phenotypic marker of EMT (De Wever et al., 2008, Turley et al., 2008). Vimentin expression has been identified in several studies of breast, colon, and other cancers as being associated with increased invasiveness and poor prognosis (De Wever et al., 2008).
